


a runaway howl

by ourviolentends



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Keith (Voltron) Angst, Keith (Voltron) Has Abandonment Issues, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Keith (Voltron)-centric, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Not Season 8 compliant, POV Keith (Voltron), Pining Keith (Voltron), Pre-Kerberos Mission, Self-Worth Issues, So much angst, heavy introspection, i don't know how to dialogue so this is lacking in that department, i guess it's more like, i just needed to vent about my precious and amazing boy, it is pretty canon compliant until season 7, my boy hasn’t lived a happy life i can tell you that, wow that's an actual tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 01:58:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17013408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ourviolentends/pseuds/ourviolentends
Summary: Sometimes it feels like Shiro is the beginning and the end of everything in his life, but the truth is there are some feelings that grew in the spaces between his ribs before he even knew about Shiro’s existence.Or: Keith and grief are the oldest of friends.“You have an amazing heart, do you know that?” Shiro’s words are soft and raw in a way Keith aches for, and they soothe the pain in his chest that grows at the thought of not seeing him again for more than a year. “It will always guide you in the right direction.” The wind blows and Shiro’s soft smile never falters.You are the right direction, Keith wants to say.You are the only direction my heart will follow.Instead, he bites his tongue and buries the taste of longing in the back of his mouth, turning his gaze up to the stars.





	a runaway howl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yuriy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuriy/gifts).



> My first Voltron fic, finally. I started it about three months ago but I'm the slowest writer in existence. BUT. You know. Season 8 made me finish it just out of spite, so I have to thank them for that, I guess.
> 
> Anyway, this is canon compliant until the end of season 7. I'm not touching S8 with a stick, so it doesn't matter. This is my canon and I don't care. There's very little dialogue in there, because I'm incapable of normal writing, apparently.
> 
> Shoutout to [Yuriy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuriy/profile), because she has endured all my ranting and saltiness about this season, and is the most amazing person ever. As I said, sweety: I don't regret dragging you into this mess. Thank you for staying.
> 
> Title is from a poem by Rachelle Toarmino.

There’s been a hollow feeling in his chest for as long as he can remember.

At six years old, Keith thinks it has everything to do with his mother’s absence and how the only thing left of her is a knife his pop keeps locked in his closet. When Keith asks about her, his dad fakes a smile and tells him a fantastic story about a fallen star and how much she loved him, how proud she would have been of him, how much she surely missed him. But stars belonged in the sky and they could only hope they were safe out there. They could pray for it.

At six years old, Keith thinks the weird feeling in his chest has everything to do with his mother’s absence. But maybe, he wonders one night as he returns quietly to his room from the kitchen and looks out the window by accident, catching a lonely silhouette by the front porch, maybe it has more to do with the way his father looks at the sky, clear and full of stars, like it has stolen his heart.

Keith doesn’t know how to call the feeling in his chest, but he thinks his dad can feel it too.

 

ᴥ

 

The day his father dies, Keith is eight and in the middle of a math test. A stern woman with blond hair knocks on the door of his classroom but he doesn’t notice, preoccupied with the problem he’s answering, until his teacher calls his name softly, too softly, and Keith looks up to watch her look at him with a sad smile.

He frowns. Miss Cadence is always cheerful and smiling, there’s something weird about her bright brown eyes and the way her lips tremble. She calls him again and he wonders if he has done something wrong, looking at his test one last time before standing up and walking to the front of the room.

“Sweetheart.” Her mouth quivers around the word, the loving moniker she uses for her students. “This is Ms Lowell, she needs to take you away for a second, okay? Don’t worry about your test, it’ll be alright.”

Keith’s frown never eases, because of course he worries about his test, but nods. Miss Cadence doesn’t seem mad and he hasn’t done anything bad, he doesn’t think. He looks up to Ms Lowell, who has a bunch of papers in her right hand and sighs as she offers the left one to him.

“Let’s go, Keith,” she says, and it’s not soft like Miss Cadence, but it doesn’t bother him.

Keith is quiet while they walk down the hall, but there’s an uneasiness that clenches inside his belly. His pop always told him to trust his guts, and Keith suddenly feels like crying. Ms Lowell doesn’t notice and just leaves him in an empty room, promising she will come back quickly and asking not to touch anything. The kid nods and holds back the tears burning in his eyes, because it’s _silly_. He has nothing to cry about.

Then Ms Lowell comes back, and he has every reason to, but he can’t.

She breaks the news quickly, methodically, but her tone softens at the words _fire_ and _didn’t make it_ and _hero_. Keith sits there after that, not really listening to anything more. He knows what death is —he has never seen his mother, after all, and the whole fallen star story could only do so much, so he had wondered—, but surely there’s a mistake, _surely_ he just needs to go back home and everything will be alright, so he nods to everything he gets asked and at some point Ms Lowell takes his hand again to guide him to the parking lot. There, they meet one of his father’s friends, another fireman, and Keith is still not crying. That changes the moment his gaze wanders to his dad’s friend’s face and Keith recognizes the look in his eyes.

It’s the same his dad used to have while telling him about the falling star that couldn’t stay.

 

ᴥ

 

The day of his father’s funeral, Keith learns that the hollow feeling inside his ribs and the look in his father’s eyes is called grief.

It is not a big funeral; his father didn’t have a family or a lot of friends. His colleges are there, of course, in full uniform —just like the one his father was going to be buried in—, but not many others. Miss Cadence, who hugs Keith for a long time and cries loudly. Mr González, the man his father worked for sometimes as a mechanic to get some extra bucks. The old lady from the corner store that always gave Keith a tiny lollipop when she saw him helping his dad with the shopping.

Keith doesn’t know what to do while the priest says the eulogy. He can feel the heaviness inside his pocket that is his mother’s knife, and wonders if he can steal something from his father when he goes back home to get his things. He thinks about it for a moment and doesn’t come up with anything. His father was not fond of many things and definitely nothing tiny enough to sneak away.

His attention snaps back when he hears the priest talk about his father’s deeds dispassionately, and his hands tingle with the urge to push him aside and make him stop. It feels wrong, everything feels wrong: the words, the paused speech, the squeaky voice. He wants to move, to do something, _anything_. He is hollow, and it hurts like nothing has ever hurt before, he just wants it to stop. He wants to leave.

He fears if he stays in one place, the wound on his heart will fester and rot like an infection, eating him alive.

He fears it has already started

 

ᴥ

 

Missing his dad is nothing like missing his mother. While missing his mother hurts quietly, like the ghost touch of a hand he has never actually felt across his cheek, missing his father is like getting a gun shot to the chest and trying to live with the open wound. It hurts, so he ignores it, and as years go by the pain starts morphing into something ugly and sharp, something that grabs his guts and sets them on fire.

There’s a time the social worker asks him how he feels, and Keith keeps his mouth shut, refusing to meet his eye. What would he know, he thinks, how could he understand the emptiness in his chest and the whispers the other kids at the home send his way. The void between his ribs demands something to fill it, and all Keith can bother to do is fill it with rage. He is thirteen years old and sleeps with his mother’s knife below his pillow, fights at every provocation, snaps at every sour look, because at least that way he stops feeling cold.

He doesn’t think about the disappointed look his father would surely give him every time he ends up washing his bloody nose before bed. He doesn’t think about it because, as the months pass by, it’s getting harder and harder to grasp how he sounded when he was angry.

 

ᴥ

 

The night he turns fifteen, Keith wakes up and cries because there’s so much he doesn’t remember about his father anymore.

 

ᴥ

 

Somehow, it feels like the beginning.

It’s one thing to see an old photograph of his dad and another one to try to remember the way his face moved while he talked about Keith’s mother, or how his laughter reverberated inside Keith’s chest making him feel safe. He doesn’t remember any of that anymore, but it shocks him, the minute he’s standing at almost sixteen years old with Takashi Shirogane inside that big hangar with the Calypso hovering in front of them, to notice that he recognises the wrinkles in the corner of the young man’s eyes. His dad had them too, laughter wrinkles from a better time, and the knowledge of that leaves him oddly breathless.

It starts with those tiny wrinkles and then all Keith can think about is how the grief living inside his lungs suddenly doesn’t feel as cold when he is focusing in the controls of the simulator, the sky in front of him and the stars his father told him about when he asked about his mother almost at arm’s length. He had thought about the stars before, but there was always a ting of sadness in that, because he wished he was still young enough to believe in his parents being up there. Together, at last. Proud of him, if he’s lucky.

He’s too old now, he knows, to believe in fallen stars and fairy tales, but… but he thinks he falls into another kind of faith as he navigates through the next months in the Garrison with a grenade heart and a fist that easily finds others’ skin and bones. Rage was firmly fixed in his guts, but it starts subduing and morphing into something less ragged with the way Shiro’s hand grasps his shoulder at every turn, his earnest voice and his _I will never give up on you_ resonating through the emptiness between his ribs, his laughter wrinkles reminding him of a better, softer time.

This, Keith thinks, this he can hold on to.

 

ᴥ

 

He is in love with Shiro.

Keith expected the moment of realization to dawn on him after one of his and Shiro’s races across the desert, the vastness of the sand all around them and the soft orange of the sunset bathing Shiro’s features like he was made of gold. That one seems like a good moment for an epiphany, Keith thinks later, and then shakes his head because obviously nothing in his life goes as planned.

He really doesn’t expect the epiphany to come while Shiro’s sweaty and greasy after a whole day playing around with his assigned hoverbike’s engine, but it does. He realizes how there’s no sharp edges tearing through his breaths the moment Shiro grins at him after coming down from it and looks around for his bottle of water, his face crunching in a confused frown that makes him look younger when he doesn’t find it. He notices how the freezing, hollow feeling in his chest has morphed into something different, something warm and alive; it’s still some kind of ache but it has nothing to do with the crushing ice of grief. If he were good with words, he would maybe classify it as longing.

Keith accepts it quickly. He has a lot of experience dealing with what he cannot change.

Even so, he doesn’t say it, not because he’s in denial, but because there’s a comfortable sort of feeling in keeping the warmth close to his chest. There’s a bit of protectiveness, too, since every other warmth in his life has been taken away violently, and there’s only so much his ribcage can take. Besides, he knows it would be an inconvenience: he has seen the soft smile Shiro saves just for Adam, their linked hands and their laughter settling heavy in the base of his stomach.

Keith’s spine can bear the weight of his own feelings alone.

 

ᴥ

 

Keith nods in acknowledgement the moment Shiro tells him he’s been chosen as the pilot for the Kerberos mission and smiles, congratulating him with a warm voice that defies the knot in his throat. It is sincere, because even if it hurts he is no less proud or happy for Shiro. He is used to being left behind by now.

“I’ll sneak you a rock from Kerberos when I get back home,” Shiro says suddenly, smiling smugly at his own rebeliousness, and it makes Keith want to laugh. The mocking words are on the tip of his tongue, but he stops cold because that’s the moment he realizes the meaning of his friend’s words. It shocks him for a moment, because he never thought this wouldn’t be like every other time someone left.

He never thought that Shiro would be _coming back_ _to him_.

That thought soars in his chest and he blinks a couple of times before it can rest comfortably against his ribs.

“Are you okay?” Shiro’s words are laced with a tinge of worry, and Keith nods absently.

“It’s nothing,” he says, but the thundering in his ears says otherwise.

 

ᴥ

 

Keith is not authorized to be at the launch site, so this is the last night he gets to spend with Shiro before he gets into quarantine. He feels selfish, because Shiro has other people he should be spending his time with, people he will surely miss and will probably be better company than a sulky seventeen year-old. Even if things with Adam ended the way they did, Shiro has bonded with so many people over the years, and yet here he is, with him, sitting on the uncomfortable Garrison roof in the middle of his last night on Earth.

He feels selfish, but truth is he wouldn’t change it. As with his memories, it is one thing to logically know that Shiro is coming _back_ and another one to actually stop his heart from beating so fast with anxiety that he thinks his ribcage is going to crumble.

It doesn’t work, not for a moment, and Keith tries to make himself smaller by hugging his knees as Shiro sits beside him in the roof, looking up at the stars like they have the answers to his prayers. For all Keith knows, they probably do. He has never met someone so in love with the tiny little dots above them, the passion in his voice when he speaks of them cannot compare to anything. It makes Keith’s traitorous heart skip a beat.

“You really love them, don’t you?” he asks in a quiet voice, and Shiro turns his head back to the ground to face him. He smiles, almost shy, his grey eyes shining with mirth.

“They call to me, you know?” Keith is not sure he does. “It’s like all my life there’s been this voice in the back of my mind telling me that’s where I belong.”

Keith frowns and Shiro notices –of course he notices--, so he looks at him with an eyebrow raised, waiting. He’s always waiting, always conscious of Keith’s boundaries and walls, and sometimes it drives him _crazy_. Sometimes he just wants for the older man to take and demand, because Keith would give him _everything_ –it would be so easy, so easy. But it wouldn’t be Shiro.

“I hate that word,” he relents after a while, looking at the desert that flows all around the base. Shiro makes a soft, questioning sound, and Keith sighs. “ _Belonging_. It feels so… confining. It feels wrong, to be owned.” His teeth are clenched and he hugs his knees further, the words leaving a raw path in his throat.

Shiro is quiet and when Keith turns, he is surprised to find him staring right back, a pensive look in his eyes.

“It does sound harsh when you put it like that, but belonging doesn’t necessarily has to do with ownership, at least I don’t think so.” His voice is serious and careful, his eyes never leaving Keith’s. “I think it’s more about finding the part of the world, of the universe, where you’re meant to be. Your heart’s proper place.”

Shiro’s words leave him breathless, and the beating against his ribcage threatens to split him in two. This is the moment, he thinks, this is the moment he spills his guts and leaves them out in the open, transparent and exposed and bloody red. This is the moment he’s been fearing for months.

Shiro _has_ to know. He doubts Shiro feels the same way, but he knows Keith so deeply that there is no way he doesn’t know.

But then Shiro turns his gaze back to the sky, and _the moment_ dissipates like it was never there at all. Keith feels bile churning in his stomach and takes two, three deep breaths to calm down. He feels like a kid –he fears that’s all he’s ever going to be in Shiro’s eyes.

In that moment, Shiro smiles, head still lined up to the stars but looking at him from the corner of his grey eyes that shine in the moonlight like they are made from it.

“You have an amazing heart, do you know that?” Shiro’s words are soft and raw in a way Keith aches for, and they soothe the pain in his chest that grows at the thought of not seeing him again for more than a year. “It will always guide you in the right direction.” The wind blows and Shiro’s soft smile never falters.

 _You are the right direction_ , Keith wants to say. _You are the only direction my heart will follow._

Instead, he bites his tongue and buries the taste of longing in the back of his mouth, turning his gaze up to the stars.

 

ᴥ

 

He notices Shiro’s absence in the hallways more than his chest. He feels it when he gets to the Garrison’s cafeteria and there’s a void space instead of Shiro waving at him and smiling from the corner table, he feels it when he gets out of the simulator after another broken record and Shiro is not congratulating him while jokingly sulking about how old he makes him feel. He notices it in the way he doesn’t speak much, his throat hoarse and shaped around _Yes, sir_ because it’s the only thing he seems to say these days.

He had logically expected this, but he was not prepared for the real thing: radio silence and nothing else to do but to push himself to catch up with Shiro, because somehow the feeling of flying is the only thing that will distract him long enough to stop looking at the stars.

He has never been in love with the stars. They were always a sore spot, memories of his father looking up at them settling heavy in his chest, the faint feeling of _wrongness_ embedded in his bones, like he was always in the incorrect side of a glass door. Stars were always Shiro’s dream, his passion blooming and contagious around the Garrison, because everyone knew since the silver boy was no more than a cadet that he would give up anything to be up there.

For Keith, the Garrison was never about the stars but the piloting, the flying, the adrenaline in his veins and the way air seemed to bend to his wishes, his guts taking control over his brain and living for a moment on pure, unadulterated instinct. The stars were secondary, to be honest. The stars were more about leaving the place he had never belonged to.

Now, as he sits alone on the Garrison roof in the same spot he felt his heart fall open just a couple of months ago, the stars are about catching up with the one person he belongs to.

 

ᴥ

 

Keith learns about black holes the same day he learns about Shiro’s death.

He listens to a long lecture about how black holes are born when stars collapse after death, how the universe grieves a beautiful existence by making anything caught in its gravitational pull unable to scape. How they keep on growing by eating gas and dust around them, leaving nothing in the aftermath.

How they die slowly, then all at once.

After class, he catches up on the news about the Kerberos mission and feels his heart stop. There’s a metaphor somewhere, but he can’t seem to grasp it.

The only thing that actually comes to mind in that moment is how it would be like to die in space –in that infinite void of black, terrified and alone–, and the pain of grief makes him tumble and bend in the hallway, bile burning on the back of his throat, barely noticing he got puke all over the place.

When his father died it felt like a gunshot, but this… this feels like a hand caressing his chest and tearing open his ribcage, spilling his guts on the floor.

Slowly, then all at once.

 

ᴥ

 

Grief welcomes him like an old friend, his oldest and only friend now, and it’s just like it has always been since he can remember: the darkness eating around his lungs, keeping him on edge. He has been alone most of his life, and now he is alone again. He knows how to deal with it.

Even so, Keith wonders about the burning in his throat that won’t ever let him alone, because it feels different. It has never felt like this. He realizes, after some days of grief crawling through his skin like a disease, that he may have been alone before, but he had never been in love and left behind. The thought dawns on him quietly, but it still knocks the air out of his lungs and makes him wreck the simulator in two seconds flat.

The look of his instructor when he gets out of there tells him everything he needs to know. For a moment, before he runs out of the building without looking back, he wonders if he looks like his dad, if his grief is so deep he looks at the sky like it has stolen his heart.

He knows then that he has to keep himself busy or heartbreak will catch him and make a home inside his aching bones, make him wreck everything he touches. But maybe it’s too late. Maybe he’s suspended in time, with nothing to go about but repeating the same two words on his mind like a loop. _Pilot error, pilot error, pilot error pilot error pilot errorpiloterrorpilot_ _errorpilot_ _._

It’s really not a surprise for anyone when he punches the next person that repeats those words. It is unfortunate that it is Iverson, but Keith doesn’t really care when they make him get his things and throw him out with a dishonourable discharge.

He never looks back at the Galaxy Garrison and he takes nothing from it. It is, after all, just another place where he was abandoned.

He doesn’t need a reminder of that.

 

ᴥ

 

Somewhere between Shiro leaving and Shiro never coming back, Keith turned eighteen. Now, forsaken from the Garrison and with nowhere else to run to, he returns to the shack that holds his oldest memories of tender happiness and stares at the desert he knows like the back of his hand.

There’s a feeling in his bones, the same _wrongness_ he gets while looking at the stars, but it’s pulling him in. It’s telling him to search something, somewhere, and Keith clings to the fleeting purpose like a lifeline.

It’s telling him to search, so he stops looking at the stars and starts digging through the vastness of the sand around him.

 

ᴥ

 

Between 100 and 300 tons of cosmic dust enter the Earth’s atmosphere daily. Keith knows this fact like he knows the right way to skin desert kingsnakes if he needs to fight the hunger and like he knows the fact that people never come back when they leave him behind.

Then Shiro does, and the emptiness is replaced by a wry sense of disbelief and paranoia.

“It’s good to have you back.” It feels like a prayer, Keith’s hand in Shiro’s shoulder looks tiny, but it’s still reminiscent of all the moments where it was the other way around.

“It’s good to be back,” Shiro answers, and his voice is threaded with so much relief that Keith wants to swallow in it. He asks what happened and Shiro looks pained. Keith forces to let go of his shoulder. He wants to keep touching him, because he can’t help but feel that if he lets go of Shiro he’s going to loose him, somehow.

 

ᴥ

 

Standing on the bridge of the Castle of Lions, surrounded by the star map the Princess uses to explain about their lions, Keith takes a moment to look at the man at his side.

Shiro looks different. He has always been big and strong, the Garrison poster boy for military poise, but now there’s a feral edge to it that is unknown to Keith. Muscles grown out of bitter survival, he realizes quietly, and mourns in his heart the smile that Shiro used to wear on his sleeve. He hasn’t seen him smile once since he came back, but he guesses that’s what a year in captivity does to you. There’s so much he doesn’t know about Shiro anymore, he realizes, and it’s the same feeling that hit him the night he turned fifteen, but different. Because Shiro is right there, beside him, and Keith remembers everything about him but it’s all just gone.

The laughter wrinkles in his eyes, though. The laughter wrinkles are still there, crass and maybe not reminders of the last year’s laughter at all, but they’re still Shiro’s. And noticing how his gray eyes roam around the room in wonder looking at the little tiny dots the same way he had always watched them from Earth, Keith lets relief flow through his body like a warm wave.

He can learn back the way Shiro changed, his little quirks, and it’s all right. He won’t loose him again, he won’t let that happen.

 

ᴥ

 

Truth is, he did let that happen. This one’s on him and only him, and he knows it deep inside his bones, but he can’t help but snap at everyone because that’s what pain does to him. No one seems to believe him when he says _Shiro is still out there_ , somewhere, but it doesn’t matter. He has always been alone and he trusts his guts and nothing else, so he searches the confines of the universe, because _what else can he do._ Grief is catching up to him again but _Shiro is still out there_.

Shiro once told him his heart would always guide him in the right direction, but Keith is so lost he’s starting to think his heart is too tired to even function correctly. Maybe this is it, maybe this is how he loses Shiro for real, in the midst of a grand battle with not even a goodbye.

Days go by and nothing changes, and Keith is so tired of swimming against the current, but he can’t stop. He will never stop.

Regret is not a new feeling, but mourning makes it uglier, because eventually he even has to leave Red behind. He mourns that as well –the easy hum in the back of his head, teasing and reckless–, and tries to find a way to accommodate Black’s more firm and dense presence into his mind and to forget how much time he is wasting while Shiro is still gone.

Before, flying was the only moment where he felt like he belonged, instincts turning over his mind and the buzz of excitement making him feel complete. Now he doesn’t even have that, because he can’t ever shake the feeling that he shouldn’t be there, in Black’s cockpit. It should be Shiro. Shiro should be safe and sound and not alone and lost somewhere in the deep black space.

That’s why, the moment Black shows him the way to Shiro, he can’t stop the shaking of his hands, because at least Shiro always comes back to him.

For once, the universe seems to give him a break.

 

ᴥ

 

In the aftermath of the explosion, just as he gets into the ship and breaths again, Keith wonders if the last thing Regris heard was his voice shouting his name.

He looks at Kolivan and can only imagine the disappointment behind his mask, but he thinks it’s the same look Allura gives him when he gets back to the Castle of Lions, bruised and a mess. _The Marmora can go on without you. They have for thousands of years. Voltron cannot._ Her words reverberate inside his head even hours after she says them, and Keith cannot help but get that feeling again, like he’s an odd-shaped piece of a puzzle that doesn’t quite fit anywhere. He’s always doing this, he’s always disappointing everyone who trusts that somehow he will be better. He can never take care of a team, not the Paladins and of course not the Blades.

He can’t save anyone.

 

ᴥ

 

He’s not used to leaving.

He knows it’s the right thing, he knows there’s only so much he can do and that the Blade is where he is more needed. It hurts, because he never thought about being the one leaving, but this is not about any of them. It’s about responsibility and duty and hoping they can end this war. It’s not about them, and he knows that.

It still gives him a bittersweet taste in the back of his mouth, his lungs cold and his blood racing, because he has always hated the word _belonging_ but he still feels like he’s leaving half his heart with the Paladins.

 _It’_ _s_ _for the best_ , he thinks as he is crushed into everyone’s arms, feeling someone’s tears and hoping they are not his own. He has come to accept that he loves them all, every annoying quirk included, and even if he couldn’t be the leader they wanted, he had _tried_. They get to have the leader they need, the leader they _deserve_ , in Shiro. Passionate, hard-working Shiro that fits so perfectly with them, never the odd-shaped piece. It’s okay, he just needs to step aside. Shiro needs this too, and he would never, ever deny anything to him. _It’s for the best_ , he repeats in his mind when he untangles himself from the hug.

As he leaves the room into the dimly lit hallway, his smile falls and he wonders why it feels like being left behind again.

 

ᴥ

 

He doesn’t know how to feel about meeting Krolia.

The knife has always felt like a promise, its weight heavy but unreal, like the ghost touch in his cheek. His mother in front of him, real and material, is another thing entirely. She had never been more than a dream, carefully placed stardust among the sky; tales and grief that he cannot dissociate with his pop’s voice, a low rumble underneath the Milky Way.

He pushes his confusion down, though, because the mission is adamant. Yet, he cannot help but just look at her from the corner of his eye, detailing the shape of her nose and the sharp edge of her eyes and let himself hope.

It’s not until they are a few months into their journey that the clenching feeling in his chest, the gripping fear in his lungs, begins to subside. He has seen, by that moment, enough of he memories to know what happened, and Krolia has been generous with the details when he asks. He is not on the defensive anymore, and he can feel himself getting comfortable with her constant presence at his side.

Nonetheless, it’s not until one of his own memories –the one from his father’s funeral– presents itself that he feels something in his chest break and he can just think _oh._

He gets up and watches Krolia’s face carefully. After so many months together, he can make out the subtle tightness in her cheeks, the way she closes her eyes like she’s tired down to the bone. It makes his breath shake and heaviness settle in his stomach, but he forces himself to start talking. He tells her the fallen star story his father used to tell him, how he stayed up at night watching the stars and how his laughter resonated throughout the house on spring days. She keeps mostly quiet, listening, but suddenly she whispers bits and pieces about his favourite side of the bed or the way he refused to shave for two weeks straight when Krolia said she liked his stubble, silly little details about his father that Keith sears into his heart.

He learns, in those long months across the Quantum Abyss, that the hollow feeling in his chest can be shared.

 

ᴥ

 

It’s been more than a year and the disturbing visions about Shiro become more frequent. Krolia never asks, until one night where Keith can’t help the tears of rage that fall from his eyes, because _he doesn’t understand._ Life cannot be this unfair, it cannot taunt him and then give him the worst possible outcome.

“Is he worth it?”

Keith’s breath catches in his lungs and he bites the inside of his cheek until he draws blood.

“Yeah. He is.”

 

ᴥ

 

Turns out, life _can_ be that unfair. Worse, even. Nevertheless, Keith doesn’t regret anything he has ever done. Especially not the things that led him to Shiro.

Still, it feels like he is the universe’s own private running gag. Like the only way he gets to get Shiro is bruised and in pieces, because he doesn’t deserve anything more, and for a moment all he can think about is that he really should be used to losing him. It shouldn’t hurt like it does, like there’s fire in his lungs and he wants to _scream_. He is so angry because the universe is so greedy, demanding everything from Shiro, even his life.

“Shiro, please, fight!” He feels all of his own fire escape with that shout and that fist to the glass, and then there’s only cold. “You can’t do this to me again,” he whispers, because he’s been here before, he has felt the nausea and the way his heart won’t seem to find the right rhythm on its beat. He has gone through this all, and he can’t do it again, he’s not strong enough to do it one more time.

He said he would save Shiro as many times as it took, but he’s so useless right now, his hands won’t stop shaking and he can feel the tears on the corner of his eyes and it’s so stupid–

The beat of the pod shakes him up, and he cannot believe his eyes when Shiro moves, his shaky hands embracing him the moment he hears him. There’s a nagging voice inside his head whispering about all his fears, about the cold feeling in his chest that almost swallowed him whole, but Keith clings to the words he whispers into Shiro’s ear like a balm for the deep wounds of his soul.

 _We saved each other_.

 

ᴥ

 

There’s a moment on the way back to Earth where Keith catches Shiro looking out the glass in Black’s cockpit and staring at a nebula with eyes full of wonder. He has a knot in his throat that prevents him from talking, but Shiro notices his presence anyway, because there hasn’t been a moment since he knows him where Shiro does not turn to greet him when he enters a room. Keith’s stomach churns and he tries to calm down, because hope is a dangerous thing.

“They are beautiful, aren’t they?” Shiro asks, and his voice is awed. Keith smiles and nods.

“They are.” His heart aches because even after everything, Shiro is still in love with the stars. Keith doesn’t know how to do that, how to love something that has caused him so much pain, so much grief.

But maybe he does, he realizes when the silverlight man beside him smiles blindly back at him.

Because, after all, he still loves Shiro.

 

ᴥ

 

After beating Sendak, it all comes down to this last moment.

He can hear the laboured breaths of the other Paladins and he can feel them through their bond, begging their lions for more energy, just a bit more, so they can take this infernal thing out there, where it won’t hurt anyone else. He knows their fear, thick and sour and petrifying, but he can also feel their determination. That one is fresh and settles in his heart like an anchor. He is so proud of them, and he hopes they know.

Keith has been responsible for so much and he knows he has left everyone down. There’s so much he couldn’t do, so much pain he couldn’t take off everyone’s shoulders. So useless, a tiny little being in the grand scheme of things. Yet, he hopes this will be enough. He has not let himself believe in anything but Shiro's strong hand on his shoulder for a long time, but this time he prays they can be enough. That _he_ can be enough.

Keith doesn’t get to hear the blast that takes them down, but he watches until it’s too much. Then, he just closes his eyes and lets himself fade.

 

ᴥ

 

In the end, it is grief what saves him. Like the old friend that she is, he is well acquainted with her cold kiss, the space between his lungs that never seems to close up and keeps hurting no matter what he does. And he can’t do that to someone else, because maybe no one ever missed him while he was travelling through the confines of the universe, but maybe some people will do if he never gets out there again, if he lets his bones to rest in this sandy, unholy corner of the planet. 

The Paladins.

The Blades.

His mother.

Shiro. He would never do that to Shiro.

He forces himself to open his eyes.

Shiro is not there the moment he wakes up, but it doesn’t matter, because the softness of his gaze the moment he sets foot inside Keith’s room, hardly twenty minutes later, is enough to make him blush.

“You have an amazing heart, do you know that?” It’s the first thing Shiro says to him, walking slowly to the edge of Keith’s bed, and Keith remembers a cold roof and the flow of the desert around them while they looked at the stars, a moment in time when he hadn’t lost his heart to them yet.

“It will always guide me in the right direction,” he answers, an almost invisible smile dancing in his lips. _To you_ , he doesn’t add. Shiro laughs and bends softly to press a light kiss to Keith’s temple and, after a tiny moment of hesitation, another one on the corner of his mouth.

He knows.

**Author's Note:**

> I just got a [Twitter](https://twitter.com/ourviolentends), if you wanna say hi and scream about Sheith with me!


End file.
